1. The Conscientious Commuter. I'd like to think that myself and the majority of my friends fall into this category. These people keep their headphones at a reasonable level on public transport and are listening to music for their own pleasure, not to prove to everyone else how "gangsta" they are. They generally have a decent pair of headphones and one of the larger iPods as they actually care about music. I like these people, these people can stay.
2. The Bad Leaker. People who fall into this category seem to have a penchant for bad dance music. They also they refuse to have any bass on anything, simply insisting that their music has as much treble as is humanly possible so that when they are blasting out god awful happy hardcore on their tinny, low quality headphones, everyone on the bus/train can tap along and count down the seconds until their prayers for a sudden crash are answered at 180bpm. Crikey, that was a little extreme, not sure where that came came from. Anyway, they're incredibly annoying, and when everyone else can hear your music over their own, it's time to take a good long look at your life.
3. The Trendy Twat. This particular breed has only sprung up in the last few months, and I blame Urban Outfitters. This involves people who wear the big, over the head, stereo headphones. Now, I don't actually have a problem with this per se, if I didn't look like a pretentious prick in mine I'd gladly wear them out and about (instead they are saved purely for home use). My problem is that these people clearly don't care about sound quality, the majority of them are wearing them over ironic Davy Crockett hats. I swear most of them aren't even listening to music, they've just seen an episode of Nathan Barley and decided "That's the look for me!". Almost everyone in Birmingham has a pair, and they're all exactly the same. The photo to your left is a fine example of the sort of moron I'm talking about.
4. The Modern Day Boom Boxer. I came across this breed the other day. A clearly drunk lady and gent (this was at 11:00am) sat in the 6 seater area on the train and proceeded to blast out reggae as loud as their tiny portable speakers would allow. What annoys me about these people is that they somewhat arrogantly assume everyone on the train wants to listen to their music, and in fact enjoys their conversation being interrupted. Well I for one don't. Unfortunately, no one ever says anything to these people, myself included, so we're stuck with some wannabe DJ polluting our public transport with their sub-par noise.
So there you have it, I can't think of any more types of mobile music listeners at this current moment so I'll leave it there. If you fall into any categories beyond number one, please feel quite quite ashamed of yourself.
